


Old World Junk

by CopperCaravan



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Codename: Tens, F/M, First Kiss, except this time it's about other stuff, hancock's usual amount of angst, references to past suicidal ideation, um...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 15:19:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6429808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A girl and a ghoul walk into a comic book store... (Hancock finds an old comic that drags up some not-so-old worries and also these losers finally kiss.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old World Junk

It’s the color that catches his eye, at first—bright and vivid, greens and blues and reds amid the dust and dirt. He shifts his gun into the sling on his back and reaches out to grab the comic book.

Funny how some stuff made it through so easy; after so long and so much, damn thing looks almost new. The architecture of the Commonwealth, the way of the Old World, so much of the shit that was made to last just... didn’t. But it seems like everywhere they go, there’s something that did. Usually something _tiny_ ; usually something inconsequential, something that doesn’t much seem to matter in the “grand scheme” of things.

His eyes flick up to watch Tens digging through an old box in the corner and he grins thinking of all the junk she’s gonna have shoved into that bag by the time they leave. “This isn’t _junk_ ,” she’s fond of saying. “ _This_ is gonna be a turret and _this_ is gonna be a water pump and _this_ is...”

Tiny? Yeah. Watching her stand on her toes to make a grab at a high shelf, watching her try to peek over the heads of other people, watching her shove around chairs and boxes to climb on when tip-toes and jumping just won’t do—it’s the kinda heart-warming shit the Commonwealth ain’t well supplied in. Hell, the woman’s hard as steel but she is _tiny._

Inconsequential, though? Not even a little. If he had to imagine the Commonwealth without her, he doubts it would be much different than it was before. And that’s the problem, really. One of the problems, anyway.

Hard to grasp at it sometimes: that by all accounts she shouldn’t be here. The Institute. Malfunctioning cryopods. Vault Tec fuckery. Bombs. The life that came before the bombs, even. Seems like the world’s done more to keep her down than anything else but she clawed her way back up, or got lucky. Or both. Him too—barely makes any sense that he’s still here; tried his hardest a few damn times to make sure he wasn’t but despite everything, here they both are. And goddamn but sometimes that hits him like a brick and it’s hard to be anything but grateful.

She looks up from her scavenging, straight at him, like she knew he was watching her. Wasn’t really _watching_ her, exactly. Wasn’t really _not_ though.

“What’d you find?” she asks, making her way around the counter and over toward him.

He shifts his feet and looks at the flimsy book in his hand, turns it over to the front cover to see what it actually is. “Oh, uh. Just a...”

A pretty, pin-up style woman that looks nothing like Tens. A woman with bright blue eyes and bright blonde hair and bright red lips. Missing a shoe, screaming in terror, dress torn and falling conveniently off her shoulder. Running. From things like him.

Zombies, they used to call these things.

Rotten and savage. Feral. Drool and blood and foaming mouths, flesh ripped and torn and dead. Eyes that are so far gone, they don’t even look like the people they must’ve been before. Things that don’t think, don’t talk, don’t care. Aren’t even really _alive._ Sure as shit aren’t _people._

He knows that if he flips open this book, there’ll be a handsome hero to save her, vanquish the rabid monsters. So he doesn’t open it.

“Just a comic book,” he says, tracing a finger along the picture.

“What is it?”

She reaches out to take it but he can’t quite loosen his grip, so she ends up just turning it toward her, brows knitting together as something dawns on her.

That’s what really gets him, maybe: that it’s so goddamn easy for her to see it. Not just for her to see _him,_ know exactly where his mind has wandered off to, but to see that goddamn picture, the dead flesh and claw-like hands and empty eyes of these fucking _monsters_ and know what he’s thinking because _of course_ he’s thinking it, _of course_ it’s easy to see. Who wouldn’t look at this fucking picture and see the ferals dead on the floor, crumpled into piles of drying blood and spittle and garbage? Who wouldn’t look at this fucking picture, at those ferals, and then look at him and not see it?

She shakes her head. “John, don’t—it isn’t like that. There weren’t any... this isn’t you. This isn’t anybody, it just...” She sighs, already frustrated that she can’t say whatever she’s trying to say.

And sure, maybe it isn’t. Maybe this stupid comic is just a stupid comic and it doesn’t have anything to do with him but... Old World junk never turns out to be just junk. And her, too—she was always supposed to be here. It shouldn’t have happened the way it did—the Vault and her family and all that. That’s too much shit to put on a person. But he can feel it—every single time he looks at her, he can feel it: she’s _supposed_ to be here and maybe it’s not about him, maybe she’s never gonna look at him and see anything but _Hancock_ or _friend_ or _guy that has her back._ Maybe she’s never gonna look at him and see anything but what he sees: ferals who don’t know who they are, who’d just as soon tear their lovers to pieces as anything else, a man who fucked up _everything_ and is just waiting for it to catch up to him. But the junk that made it through all this, the people, it all falls into place too well; it’s supposed to be this way, so how could this stupid comic ever _just_ be a stupid comic?

“ _John._ ”

He might laugh. It is pretty funny, really, how she can go from fumbling to stern so quickly. It’s almost like she’s a different person: wringing hands and downcast eyes and careful, stumbling words but then she’s nothing but certainty and he’s halfway to standing at attention like he’s not the Mayor of Goodnieghbor, not one of the most powerful men in the Commonwealth, not her partner but her hired hand. She has that affect on lots of people; they underestimate her at first and then she’s got them by the balls. Always makes him grin. Even now, he might laugh.

She pries it away from him and her hands are rough, much more so than they generally are, particularly with him. But she’s angry, he realizes, and the sound of fluttering pages is almost obscene, almost erotic, when she flings the damned thing across the room.

And that might’ve been enough—wouldn’t have pushed the image from his mind, wouldn’t have scrubbed away the worry that’s been at eating at him since long before she arrived, but it mattered, shook him back awake at the very least.

But she doesn’t stop, doesn’t let go of his hand, curled now around empty space and looking far too much, to him, like the clawed hands of the figures on the cover. How much longer does he have, really? And if it happens, who’ll be there to—

She lifts his hand to her mouth and he crumbles at the way her lips feel, pressed and moving against his palm as she says “John, stop.” And he’s lost in the way she looks up at him, steady in the eyes like she’s never been afraid of anything in her life and she sure as shit isn’t afraid of _him._ And he’s hardly even aware at all of his other hand moving to her ear, dragging her hair out of her face so he can see a little more of her while she rises up on her toes to press her lips against his mouth.

At first he doesn’t even kiss her back, doesn’t even realize, despite it all, what she’s doing, what she wants. But quick enough his hands move on their own, grip her waist and tangle in her hair and he pulls her closer when she leans into him. It doesn’t make any sense but here she is, here _they_ are, and despite everything, her arms are around his neck, pulling him down to meet her.

Tiny. Anything but inconsequential. And maybe his.

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta'd and also only draft 1.5 so may be heavily revised later (like so much of the stuff I've put up lately, someone tie me to my desk).  
> There *need* to be jokes that start off with "a girl and a ghoul walk into" anything. A bar. A comic book store. A robot-run strip mall. ("The Institute." "I don't get the joke, Sunshine." "The joke is that they blow it up." "...")  
> \---oh man I completely forgot to mention it (because it does not matter but it matters to ME) that I gave the comic Hancock finds a title; it's called Dead Heads. (Like I said, it does not matter but it is important to me so I needed to tell everyone.)---


End file.
